OUR STORY
How it all began
Flowers have been pursuing me for a long time. When I was in school, I would often doodle flowers along the margins of my notes. I didn’t have access to real flowers, though I remember picking lilies of the valley in my backyard. In sixth grade we took a class trip to Washington D.C. I loved the city and I found what I heard about our country’s leadership to be distressing. I thought if I got involved in politics, I could help, and thus I became a government and politics major in college. My freshman year I went to see the department chair to ask her opinion about picking a specialty. The chair wisely responded, “What keeps you up at night?” “Religion,” I told her.
Though I quickly realized I was not a likely fit for public office (I always tell the truth), I realized I enjoyed studying politics and I went on to do a PhD in political science at the University of Florida. I chose Moroccan religious politics as the topic of my doctoral research, and found it not in the least bit unusual that I spent all my spare time admiring the bougainvillea that sprawled over stone ledges, tagging along with local landscape architects, and doing yoga on the rooftop of the riad that I rented.
I continued to teach political science, but my heart was increasingly in yoga and flowers. I used academic conferences as opportunities to visit studios across the country, and I began undertaking studies in yoga and floral design. I have studied with a wide range of teachers and in a variety of styles over the past fifteen years and trained with Melissa Montilla (former ashtangi turned functional movement guru – 200 hour), Jee Moon (yin yoga + anatomy super star – 50 hr), and Tara Glazier (Abhaya yoga founder goddess lover– 200 hour).
My devotion to flowers was always rooted in spirituality. I still remember the first flower arrangement that really caught my eye, at the little Episcopalian church across the street from my flat in Foggy Bottom. I went through spiritual direction, during which time I came to a new image of God from the one that I found in traditional Christianity. Whereas I had been taught that God was interested in mercy, forgiveness, and love, the wild spirit that I encountered in my own quiet moments with the divine seemed much more interested in beauty. I came to flower arranging as a spiritual practice, and engagement with that wild beauty, and my first workshop was with the wonderful Flower Guild of the National Cathedral.
My first experiences as a floral designer were for my Episcopalian church in Oxford, Ohio, where I did the flower arrangements for the altar each Sunday, often harvesting from parishioners’ gardens if anything was in bloom, or buying flowers from local flower farms. I always worried that I was going a bit too far, flowering branches towering over the clergy. But I was often told how “ethereal” the flowers were, and I came to a strong belief that flowers can communicate aspects of the divine that words simply cannot capture.
Bringing flowers and yoga together is a natural move for me. I easily find flow states when arranging flowers, and I love to practice yoga outdoors. Though many studios are well-endowed with plants, virtually none have embraced flowers besides the small vase traditionally set on the altar. My long-term vision is a studio overflowing with flowers, so that yogis can immerse themselves in the wild beauty of the divine, finding a kind of oneness with Spirit and greater ease in their lives as they rely less on rational analysis and more on the quiet whispers they hear on the mat. Until that day comes, I’m hosting events at existing studios, so that yogis can get a taste of what it means to flower and flow, and I’m supporting members as they create their own life rituals. Thanks for stopping by.
Namaste,
Ann Wainscott
